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How to Spend Father’s Day Without a Father

It’s a little after midnight so Father’s Day is finally over but I figured I would go ahead and make a post regarding this “holiday”. I tried to write something last night but everything I wrote ended up sounding either depressing, insensitive or just plain psychotic.

So I’m going to take you all through a Father’s Day spent with a fatherless family.

I spent the majority of my day at work. I’m a waitress and sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how passionate I am about my job…

Sunday is the worst day of the week to work for me because I’m normally too tired to function. I’m too cranky to want to refill Grandma’s decaf coffee and then awkwardly avoid your table while you pray over your pancakes. All of this to be left a 10% tip stuffed inside a pamphlet explaining exactly what I must do in order to get into Heaven.

I just…I just can’t with Sundays.

And with it being Father’s Day I got to deal with teenagers paying for their fathers’ meals and leaving me NOTHING. UGH. DID YOUR FATHER’S NOT TEACH YOU ANYTHING? Since I grew up without a father, maybe I’m oblivious to the teachings of dads but I thought tipping your waitress was one of the major fatherly lessons? No? Well, it fucking should be.

So I’m at work and I put lipstick on which means I actually woke up with enough time to put effort into my appearance. I’ve been kind of lazy when it comes to doing my makeup for when I go to work because I really don’t care anymore if anyone finds me attractive because at this point I just want to go to work and then go home and nap forever. The first thing one of my managers said to me when I walked in the door this morning was “Marki, I’m proud of you. You’ve managed to do your makeup every day this week.” Kthanxbye.

I go through my shift and I smile and avoid the awkward “How’s your father’s day?” question that always comes with this holiday.

“Oh it’s great! I’m going to go drink a beer at my dad’s grave later and then smoke a cigar at my stepdad’s grave after that.”

I’m kidding. I would never say that to someone…although my mood fluctuates throughout the day and I can only smile and nod so many times in order to make other people feel comfortable. I mean, why should the fact that every male figure in my life has kicked the bucket make anyone feel uncomfortable? I’m the one with the dead dads, okay. I’m the one that’s uncomfortable. But there’s a certain “dead parent social etiquette” one must follow.

I get off of work and head over to my sister and brother-in-law’s condo to get ready for the season finale of Game of Thrones (!!!!!!!!!!!). It’s a Sunday ritual. They live right next to my mom so I make my family rounds and eat a home cooked meal and spend some time with my family.

I get to their house and am immediately greeted by their two massive pitbulls. I have to fight my way to the couch and basically sit there and let them smother me before I can lay down and take a nap before the show starts. I check my phone and talk to my other sister for a few minutes. She struggles with Father’s Day a little more than I do because she was far older than I was when Dad died so she remembers him very clearly. I find myself feeling more sad about not having a Dad rather than not having MY dad, if that makes sense? I just don’t remember him that well.

Finally, I fall asleep until my sister gets home from work and I have to resurrect myself from the couch. To get food. Because let’s face it: I’m twenty years old and I live on my own…not much is going into this stomach except for a few margaritas and chocolate ice cream.

I politely go through the motions of asking my sister how her day had been and if she was thrilled to be home and blah blah blah but all I can think is “what are you going to cook and when are you going to start?” So I ask.

The bitch has nothing planned for dinner. My heart hurts just thinking back on the moment I realized I wasn’t getting a home cooked meal. I die a little inside each time I miss an opportunity to eat my sister’s food. She’s a damngood cook.

I pitch a little fit and decide to go see my mom because my mother never fails to feed me when times get tough.

I stroll on up to her condo and say hello. First off, she’s wearing a skirt pulled up to her chest in order to make some sort of strapless dress??? No, Mom. That’s not how it works.

“Hi, Mom. I’m hungry plz feed me.”

She replies by telling me that she’s making steaks and I’m like HELL YEAH LET’S GO. But then she informs me that she’s not making them for a while so I had to settle for a chicken salad sandwich which I happily had as a pre-steak snack.

I go into her bedroom and talk to her for a few minutes. She asks how I’m doing and I ask the same and we’re both so dramatic that we don’t believe each other when we both say we’re doing fine. She goes onto saying that I’m too skinny and my hair is so long and pretty and then offers me money that I don’t accept because I know she doesn’t really have any to actually give me. Then her phone rings and she talks on the phone while I sit and play with our dog I grew up with. He’s a little rat dog named Thor. He rules.

After she had been on the phone for fifteen minutes I began to get irritated because she’s always bitching at me because I don’t call or visit her enough yet here I am eating a sandwich and wanting attention. So I make some sort of gesture and tell her to get off the phone.

“I have to go. My daughter is here.”

I’m assuming whoever was on the phone asked how old I was and my mother, oh so politely replied, “Oh hell, I don’t know. 19 or 20? Is it too late for an abortion?”

She gets off the phone and tells me to come back up after my show to retrieve my steak and baked potato (!!!!!!!!)

I return back to my sister’s house and watch an awesome episode of GoT. My sister, Charli, is sitting at the kitchen table eating and playing on her phone because she doesn’t really like GoT because she was raised in a barn and doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life. I take this opportunity to text her from across the room and tell her that she smells bad which results in her getting up and trying to hit me. We’re very close.

After the episode I go back up to my mom’s to eat dinner and I sit there and listen to her boyfriend talk about…I don’t even know. I basically just sit there and count the minutes until he stops talking. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy. I just don’t understand anything he’s talking about and it’s really exhausting trying to keep up.

My mom comes out with some sort of milky concoction which she later informs me is her take on a “White Russian” which basically consists of .01% milk and the rest is just straight up FIRE. I took a sip and almost fell out of my chair.

“Damn, Mom, it’s 10:00 at night! Are we shooting for a nice alcohol induced coma to help us go to sleep?” to which she responds “If you can’t drink with the big dogs then get out.” Lol.

I sit and eat my food that ~my mommy~ made for me and I sit and listen to her talk about nothing of importance and just think about how lucky I am to have her. She lost the love of her life and still manages to feed me whenever I whine which is pretty damn often. She makes me laugh harder than anyone I know, granted most of her jokes are morbid as hell and usually leave me questioning her sanity. As the years go by and Father’s Day comes and goes, I find myself being less and less sad about the fact that my dads are dead because really I have nothing to really compare it to. I can’t remember my life before my dad died so really it’s nothing out of the ordinary for me.

Sometimes I get sad and even a little jealous looking at the Instagram pictures of girls with their dads and reading paragraphs of how lucky they are to have such a strong and supportive male figure in their lives but then again, they probably all have just as many daddy issues as I do.

But while they’re making memories and Facebooking pictures, I’m out searching for love in all the wrong places just trying to desperately fill the void that living without a father has left me with…

I hope you all had a great day and to those of you who share my fatherless experience I hope you had fun in some sort of way.